Transfer to grad school in USA (Austin)

I’m going to ask a question that may seem a little silly: Do you actually want to get a graduate degree? Or are you mostly interested in having a fun social life where you can party and meet some new friends, and going to graduate school just seems like the best way to get that?

I mean, no judgment here - I partied through college and much of graduate school, lol; I’ve commented on this forum before that I didn’t sleep much during my first two to three years of graduate school :stuck_out_tongue: I think it’s totally normal for a person in their early to mid 20s to want to capture some of that vibrancy and fun of life.

Actually, it’s so normal…that young adults do it regardless of whether they’re in school or not :wink: When I was in graduate school, most of my friends were master’s students from other programs, and we hung out and partied after they graduated, too. I also made some friends who were college graduates but were simply working full-time. Most of the people in the club on the weekends are not graduate students :smiley: Honestly, when I went to college in a large city (Atlanta), a lot of the people at the same parties I was at were recent college graduates with no current ties to uni. And after I moved to Seattle in my late 20s, people were still out partying here, too, in the bars and clubs and stuff.

If you want to make friends and socialize, graduate school isn’t necessarily a bad place to do that. But I do think that it is a bad reason, on its own, to go to graduate school - and that’s because life in general is a good place to meet friends and socialize. Remember that people of all ages work - some people go to work right after college (or after high school) and start working in their early 20s. Even people who have gotten master’s degrees will be in their mid-to-late 20s. There are lots of ways that a young person in a new environment can meet new friends - at work, at community events, at organizations, volunteering, etc. Thousands of young adults flock to Austin every year for work and many of them move there knowing no one.

I moved to Seattle five years ago knowing absolutely no one, and now I have some lifelong friends - people I’ve gone on multiple trips with, whose kids call me auntie and for whom I’m on the emergency pick-up list, etc… I met these people when I was 29ish. And looking forward a generation, my parents are in their late 50s and they have friends they met in their 30s and 40s and 50s who are still friends of theirs now.

I feel like the media has pushed this narrative that people make friends in their teen years and 20s and then never make any new friends again! because those are your friends for life! but oh god, it’s so not true. I’ve also heard people say that they’re afraid that people who are “older” (and by older, they usually mean like 25, lol) are already too “settled” and don’t want to meet new people, but that’s not true either! Being settled has nothing to do with whether you want friendship, a good time, etc. People with jobs, families and children like to meet new people and socialize, too!

You seem to be trying to go for a new degree based on what you want to do in your social life, but you can have the social life you want without being attached to a university. If you’ve gone straight from high school to college to your master’s program it may be hard for you to imagine how people have fun and make connections outside of a structured environment, but trust me, they do!